


Never Bitter and All Delicious

by ElijahDarling



Category: Leverage
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Genie/Djinn, Alternate Universe - Pre-Canon, F/M, I play very fast and loose with myths on this one, Nathan Ford is a Genie, Sophie is alone and lonely
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-10-04
Updated: 2018-10-04
Packaged: 2019-07-25 00:31:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,206
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16186364
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ElijahDarling/pseuds/ElijahDarling
Summary: "Sophie wanted to find adventure in this treasure trove more than anything else - her retirement stashes all over the world were well stocked, but she felt like she’d been cupping a candle flame when once life had roared through her like a forest fire. She wanted ignition.It was on this metaphor that the teapot drew her - certainly not it’s value, which was probably only a little over four grand. Silver, Irish, late 1800s - these she could tell at a glance. What wasn’t as clear was why she so urgently wanted to grasp the handle and cradle it close."In which the Leverage crew never came together, Nathan Ford was never an I.Y.S. investigator, and Sophie meets a genie that seems inclined to give her enough rope to hang with. It's a good thing he has a cute butt, or the whole thing would be a bust.





	Never Bitter and All Delicious

**Author's Note:**

> Anyone familiar with the song Three Wishes by The Pierces? You might wanna go listen.
> 
> You're back? Cool, here's another fic universe because I have zero impulse control and the idea came to me while I was contemplating Creature!Nathan Ford possibilities. I may or may not actually finish this.

Anne Pierce is in her would-be-lover’s attic as he’s snoozing saliva into the couch pillow from where he’d collapsed. Poor dear just couldn’t hold his ambien, it seemed. She hadn’t been opposed to a bit of a flirt - and maybe fifteen years ago he’d have qualified for a rub and tug job, but while Anne Pierce was a woman looking for romance and a saliva swap sans furniture, Sophie was a woman more interested in what her mark had stashed away from his recent inheritance.

 

Still, she had made sure to take his shoes off and put his legs up on the couch to make his nap a bit more comfortable. She liked her never-to-be-lover well enough - in the two months it had taken her to grab an invite to his family estate they’d found a mutual love of rugby that they both pretended to be coy about. Sophie wonders idly if she’ll be able to wrangle one last pub date out of him before having to vanish from his life. He’d been intent on kissing her everywhere before the drugged drink had kicked in, and in her experience with men once they got their lips on her it was hard to put them off significantly longer. She was proud to say no grifter had a better tease for long cons than she did. 

 

Both Anne and Sophie are in high spirits at the sight before her in the attic; Anne tickled pink that her would-be-lover hadn’t been emptily boasting about all the treasures he wanted to show her and Sophie feeling quite like a proud mouser having successfully followed her never-to-be-lover straight to his hidey-hole.

 

She’ll admit that lately she’d found herself feeling a little dull - a little listless. This con had been born out of a sort of vague idea that what she found at the end of it might lead her into a thrill she could ride for perhaps a decade. Sophie wanted to find adventure in this treasure trove more than anything else - her retirement stashes all over the world were well stocked, but she felt like she’d been cupping a candle flame when once life had roared through her like a forest fire. She wanted ignition. 

 

It was on this metaphor that the teapot drew her - certainly not it’s value, which was probably only a little over four grand. Silver, Irish, late 1800s - these she could tell at a glance. What wasn’t as clear was why she so urgently wanted to grasp the handle and cradle it close. No flight of fancy had struck her for similar items before. Still, she took it, and left Anne Pierce behind when she left her mark’s estate.

 

* * *

 

It ends up being a rub and tug job after all.

 

Well, the sort of rub and tug with Sophie gaping at a nude man on her knees when the only handling she’d been about was taking a polishing cloth and making her new teapot a smidge more presentable.

 

She almost bashes his brains in with the teapot. The stranger tells her it would be a shame to make a mess out of her carpet and dress with his blood. It is a good point. She sets the teapot down and finds her gun.

 

* * *

 

“I know you don’t want to kill me.” The man says with his back to her as she orders him to march to her basement. He is still naked, which makes a little sense as previously he’d been a mass of mist living in her treasure apparently just waiting for some unsuspecting lady to fondle it. Still, Sophie finds herself a little insulted on the principle of it all. To find out that aliens or creatures or whatever he was were real and also be exposed to a fairly cute behind all in the span of minutes? What cheek.

 

Literally.

 

“You don’t know me at all, so I wouldn’t make assumptions on your survival. Not many women are inclined to let naked men trespass in their bedrooms without injury.”

 

“I think if you were going to kill me you wouldn’t be talking to me at all - I think you’re stalling until you can orient yourself which tells me you had no idea what you were taking in the first place. You don’t look like someone who planned on meeting a genie today.”

 

Sophie stops and stares. “A genie.”

 

His hand tilts a little side to side. “Of a sort.”

 

She locks him in her basement and stashes the teapot in her chimney. 

 

Then she pours herself a helping of the good vodka that Tara had sent her on her “vacation” to Russia last winter.

 

* * *

 

“Let’s say I believe you.”

 

“Yes, let’s.” He replies in a mild tone of voice. Sophie narrows her eyes at him.

 

“How would that work exactly? And please spare me and speak plainly, please, I’ll not have a Monkey’s Paw today. Thank you all the same.”

 

“Three wishes. You ask them. I grant them. Is that plain enough? Also, I’m not a selkie. Hiding my teapot won’t ensure my cooperation and you’ve ruined the polish job on it now.”

 

“Tell me why I shouldn’t toss it into the ocean and never look back.”

 

The man flicked his eyes away and then back to her, a cold smile hardening his mouth. “You wanted adventure, didn’t you?”

 

Sophie locks the basement door again and goes for another round of vodka, shivering.

 

She cannot say if it’s from fear, excitement, or anticipation.

 

* * *

 

Anne Pierce had wanted romance. Sophie Devereaux wanted adventure.

 

There is a man in her basement. An apparently magic teapot in her chimney. A fire in her she thought in danger of burning low.

 

She laughs at herself.  _ So eager to burn again, love? _

 

Once, when she’d been young and hungry, she’d fallen in love with a mark. She’d lived in his home with him, eaten at his table, shared his bed, and though she’d loved him dearly, in the end she could never give him what he wanted. That relationship had left her singed and twice shy for having tried at all.

 

Truly it was the last time she ever felt even a little at risk; and she’d taken bullets out of the guns of hitters sent to kill her before narrowly disappearing to another corner of the earth, leaving them with an empty  _ click click _ in their hand and a curse on their lips.

 

She takes the teapot out of the chimney, and taps her nails along the outside - carefully, thoughtfully.

 

Considering.

 

“Is that a yes?” She hears him yell from the basement, though he shouldn’t be able to hear her in the parlor. 

 

* * *

 

She brings him some spare clothes when she goes to let him out of the basement.

 

“I seem to have misplaced my manners, forgive me.” He cocks his head to the side at this. “In all the confusion and nudity I don’t believe I got your name.”

 

He pulls on the pants and fastens himself up. “Nathan Ford. At your service.”

 

He doesn’t ask her name. 

 

It doesn’t even take her a day to realize that he doesn’t ask the questions he anticipates she’ll lie in answer to. 

 

So, he doesn’t ask many questions.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm ElijahDarling on Tumblr too.


End file.
